


all the stories you will leave

by ygrittebardots



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Childhood, Gen, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 05:49:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1887276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ygrittebardots/pseuds/ygrittebardots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Arya is not afraid of thunderstorms and Jon is not ready to have this conversation with his little sister.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the stories you will leave

**Author's Note:**

> Arya is seven, Jon is twelve.

It’s a tower crashing to the ground that wakes him. Or at least it seems so from the almighty noise, but when Jon’s eyes fly open there’s nothing but the dark familiarity of his chambers. 

Then it happens, a brilliant flash of stark white leaving him temporarily blind before it’s gone again, leaving nothing but the last embers dying in the hearth and the angry downpour of rain pounding on the roofs of Winterfell. A thunderstorm, Jon recognizes dimly. The dark hours of the morning have left his senses dulled, and for the time being he has no desire to regain them. Sleepily, he pulls the blankets and furs piled on his bed more closely to his body.

“Jon?”

He hadn’t heard the door creak open, but he would recognize that voice and short silhouette in the dark anywhere.

“Arya? What are you doing?”

She doesn’t answer, but takes a small step into the room when another roll of thunder comes crashing down around the keep.

“Are you afraid?”

“No!” she exclaims, and at his soft chuckle amends, “I - I’m bored. I couldn’t sleep.”

“I see,” he responds, more awake now. 

His little sister wants to be a knight, or a wildling, or a Braavosi sellsword, depending on the day. Knights in songs and stories do not fear raging storms, so neither will Arya Stark.

Another flash of brilliant light fills the room, and she lets the door shut behind her, pinning herself up against it. Jon stifles a grin, assuming the most solemn of expressions. 

“As it happens,” he lies, “I can’t sleep either. I suppose we’d best keep one another company, then.”

He pulls back the covers on the side closest to her, and Arya needs no more invitation than that. She buries herself under the pile of blankets and furs and snuggles up against him just as another roar of thunder splits the heavens. Jon throws a protective arm around her and pulls her close, for despite her brave words he can feel her shaking beside him.

“It’s a thunderstorm, little sister,” he says gently. “Nothing more. A duel of dragons and giants, Old Nan says.”

“That’s stupid,” she responds, and he grins. “Besides, Septa Mordane says it’s the Seven. She says they’re angry.”

“I wouldn’t know. I keep the old gods.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you keep the old gods when the rest of us keep the new?” she clarifies sleepily.

Why, indeed. Jon comes short at that, because it’s never really come up before. 

Arya’s seven, the same age Jon was when he first understood what the word _bastard_ meant, and he knows no one’s explained it to her yet. If they had, she would have come right to him, because that’s simply the way his youngest sister is. So how does he explain such a thing? 

_Father keeps the old gods, and I don’t know which my mother followed. He won’t tell me who she was._

_My name is Snow. I belong to the North, and the North belongs to the nameless gods._

_Your mother is not my mother and I do not keep her faith._  

She knows that, there’s no hiding that - she just hasn’t put it together the way you do when you have a more complex understanding of the world. His brothers and sisters swear by the old gods and the new, but his sisters are instructed by a septa and his brother Bran dreams of being knighted under the Seven someday, and that is Lady Catelyn’s doing. 

He doesn’t find her at fault for this, nor for the smiles and hugs she has in spades for her children yet never sends his way. She never asked for him. He’s not her son, just a stain on her husband’s honor. He only wishes, as he often does, that he might have grown up with a similar guiding hand. A mother of his own to give him smiles and hugs, and take him to a weirwood tree or a sept, whichever she might have chosen. But she _had_ chosen, and she hadn’t chosen him.

“Arya - ” he says, then stops at a steady lift and fall of the chest and a light snoring sound. She’s drifted off to sleep again.

Jon looks down at her long face so like his own, and feels some of the tightness in his chest release. He doesn’t have a mother, true, and popular opinion will name him immoral and filled with deceit the moment the name _Snow_ is uttered. But with the skinny arms of the little girl he loves more than anything wrapped around his waist, Jon is content.

He kisses the top of her dark head and nuzzles them further into the blankets.

This will be a conversation for a different day.


End file.
